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Being made in a time when music was analog (AM/FM) and almost no one gave serious thought to sound quality, the stock audio setup is abysmal by today's standards. The factory chose 3.5" round on the dash and 4"x10" in the side pillars, neither particularly capable of anything mid-to-low range, and the size of the sides alone presenting nasty distortion.

What options exist for improving the stock setup? I'm including setups involving different sizes in the stock locations (6x9's in the sides, for example).

My car has the Alpine sound package "option" which includes a Genesis P5 amp along with Alpine head and CD changer and the speakers are the Eclipse se8235 on the front which are the same size but the sound quality is no doubt better especially with the built in tweets360.jpg
The rears are Eclipse se 8495 3 way 35w (100peak) product_337820.jpg
These are factory sized and with the 8" Sub behind the seat all driven by the Genesis it makes for a good system that keeps a stock unmodified look.(the amp hides behind the rear shelf and all that's visible is the cooling fan which actually looks good.20140819_212733.jpg
This is all 2005 technology so I'm sure even better factory sized combinations are out there.

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Rest assured, we have a backup of Farrar's car blog and it will be restored in the near future. (Steve Rice - March 2016)
Rest assured, we have a backup of Shep's posts and all of them will be restored in the near future. (Steve Rice - March 2017)

I've probably spent more time on stereo setups than on the turbo setup, sadly.

If I wanted a slightly less complex setup that didn't involve the spare tire well I'd spend good money building a cubby sub enclosure. A very high quality 8" speaker in a box built to match the requirements precisely. A ported enclosure would be best but I'm not sure the cubby has the volume of space required for porting.

I like my kick pods but would reduce them to 5.25" size. DIY fiberglass is a PITA but rewarding. The DMCCA units are probably good for most.

Everything about the stock setup is a limiting factor (size, locations, twin axial headunit). Once you start pulling at the audio thread its gets involved quickly

Wondering too: I've seen a few guys rework the 4x10 location to a wider size, but the ones I've seen go round. Is there room for a 6x9 in there if you work it right?

Originally Posted by FABombjoy

A subwoofer added to a stock position arrangement would make a good difference.

Totally agreed. I've got dual 12" subs in my trunk of my daily driver, it really adds a whole new element to the music. The 10" sub did too, but the one I ran didn't go low enough for my tastes.

Originally Posted by FABombjoy

The DMCCA kick panels would be a good first step for someone that wants a significant improvement but doesn't want to DIY a speaker box solution.

Wait, those were DMCCA parts? I assumed protodelorean fabricated his own one-offs and no one thought to do the same.

Interestingly enough, I can't find ANY of the franchise-specific parts for California. I remember having trouble with Midwest parts too -- I was interested in their illuminated door sills before the site was replaced with the new DMCH site. Listings eventually made their way onto the shared store under some really obscure section, but they've since disappeared. DMCH's store system sucks at times, especially if they use a ridiculous name for a part and you basically have to google what you want to find some guy that links to it (have they never heard of keywords? Seriously.)

I've literally never even seen anything like that metering head adapter. Good lord they need to put their stuff out there... +1 on the having parts that aren't well advertised, their leather binnacles are quite good, although they are far from the OEM ones that Danny at DMC Cal had zero knowledge of when I inquired. (Can't fault him for that though, next to no one has.)

I'm remembering now why I never pursued the kick panel variety. This page on your site (avoiding hotlinking -- no sure what your policy is on that) shows how much it intrudes into the footwell area. For a 5-speed where you are really only having your feet on the three pedals, this isn't really a problem. For an automatic where you want to give your feet a break though...

The kicker with the DeLorean is that its size and shape make for severely limited options for where you can mount stuff. Doors don't have any spot big enough even if you drilled a giant 6" hole for it, not to mention the ungodly hell that would arise from routing the wiring that way. The center console would be nice if that wasn't hiding the frame. The front trunk requires vertically-positioned speakers or a spare tire removal, not to mention everything in between there and the cabin interfering with the sound quality. I would be tempted to say the dashboard itself is the only spot where 6.5's can be feasibly installed without taking up room, but that would require reworking or removing the glovebox and figuring out how to fit it around the binnacle (if you even can). This wouldn't be so bad if smaller sizes could put out the same kind of sound as the bigger ones, but it almost seems by design that they can't (or if they can, for the love of god point me to a good-sounding 3" sub!!!)

Thanks! It was my first time working with fiberglass. If I make another set there are a few dozen things I'll do differently.

Principally I would build them with reverse-facing port that could have inserts added for tuning. I first made them sealed which was a mistake that really reduced the low end response. A few hits with a hole saw to the back helped quite a bit. You can't always find t/s parameters for component sets and even if you could the ideal enclosure size is probably much larger than what I built. With a large port you could thread in different tubing lengths until finding something that works best.

The first question is usually "doesn't your leg rub the speaker?" For most people it doesn't but it would be nice to have 1" of additional space. Having them face each other like the DMCCA units sounds good too. I listened with the speakers facing several angles and what you see sounded best so I couldn't have it any other way.

I made a cubby subwoofer too but was never really happy with the sound. Using a Kicker Solobaric 10" I tried to get too much sub into too little space. It was a lotta lotta bass but just not the frequencies that I really wanted. The current shallow 12" spare tire sub scratches that itch nicely.